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Page 10
There appeared to be no end to the devastated forest land, and the farther
she rode the more barren and sordid grew the landscape. Carley forgot about
the impressive mountains behind her. And as the ride wore into hours, such
was her discomfort and disillusion that she forgot about Glenn Kilbourne.
She did not reach the point of regretting her adventure, but she grew
mightily unhappy. Now and then she espied dilapidated log cabins and
surroundings even more squalid than the ruined forest. What wretched
abodes! Could it be possible that people had lived in them? She imagined
men had but hardly women and children. Somewhere she had forgotten an idea
that women and children were extremely scarce in the West.
Straggling bits of forest--yellow pines, the driver called the trees--began
to encroach upon the burned-over and arid barren land. To Carley these
groves, by reason of contrast and proof of what once was, only rendered the
landscape more forlorn and dreary. Why had these miles and miles of forest
been cut? By money grubbers, she supposed, the same as were devastating the
Adirondacks. Presently, when the driver had to halt to repair or adjust
something wrong with the harness, Carley was grateful for a respite from
cold inaction. She got out and walked. Sleet began to fall, and when she
resumed her seat in the vehicle she asked the driver for the blanket to
cover her. The smell of this horse blanket was less endurable than the
cold. Carley huddled down into a state of apathetic misery. Already she had
enough of the West.
But the sleet storm passed, the clouds broke, the sun shone through,
greatly mitigating her discomfort. By and by the road led into a section of
real forest, unspoiled in any degree. Carley saw large gray squirrels with
tufted ears and white bushy tails. Presently the driver pointed out a flock
of huge birds, which Carley, on second glance, recognized as turkeys, only
these were sleek and glossy, with flecks of bronze and black and white,
quite different from turkeys back East. "There must be a farm near," said
Carley, gazing about.
"No, ma'am. Them's wild turkeys," replied the driver, "an' shore the best
eatin' you ever had in your life."
A little while afterwards, as they were emerging from the woodland into
more denuded country, he pointed out to Carley a herd of gray white-rumped
animals that she took to be sheep.
"An' them's antelope," he said. "Once this desert was overrun by antelope.
Then they nearly disappeared. An' now they're increasin' again."
More barren country, more bad weather, and especially an exceedingly rough
road reduced Carley to her former state of dejection. The jolting over
roots and rocks and ruts was worse than uncomfortable. She had to hold on
to the seat to keep from being thrown out. The horses did not appreciably
change their gait for rough sections of the road. Then a more severe jolt
brought Carley's knee in violent contact with an iron bolt on the forward
seat, and it hurt her so acutely that she had to bite her lips to keep from
screaming. A smoother stretch of road did not come any too soon for her.
It led into forest again. And Carley soon became aware that they had at
last left the cut and burned-over district of timberland behind. A cold
wind moaned through the treetops and set the drops of water pattering down
upon her. It lashed her wet face. Carley closed her eyes and sagged in her
seat, mostly oblivious to the passing scenery. "The girls will never
believe this of me," she soliloquized. And indeed she was amazed at
herself. Then thought of Glenn strengthened her. It did not really matter
what she suffered on the way to him. Only she was disgusted at her lack of
stamina, and her appalling sensitiveness to discomfort.
"Wal, hyar's Oak Creek Canyon," called the driver.
Carley, rousing out of her weary preoccupation, opened her eyes to see that
the driver had halted at a turn of the road, where apparently it descended
a fearful declivity.
The very forest-fringed earth seemed to have opened into a deep abyss,
ribbed by red rock walls and choked by steep mats of green timber. The
chasm was a V-shaped split and so deep that looking downward sent at once a
chill and a shudder over Carley. At that point it appeared narrow and ended
in a box. In the other direction, it widened and deepened, and stretched
farther on between tremendous walls of red, and split its winding floor of
green with glimpses of a gleaming creek, bowlder-strewn and ridged by white
rapids. A low mellow roar of rushing waters floated up to Carley's ears.
What a wild, lonely, terrible place! Could Glenn possibly live down there
in that ragged rent in the earth? It frightened her--the sheer sudden
plunge of it from the heights. Far down the gorge a purple light shone on
the forested floor. And on the moment the sun burst through the clouds and
sent a golden blaze down into the depths, transforming them incalculably.
The great cliffs turned gold, the creek changed to glancing silver, the
green of trees vividly freshened, and in the clefts rays of sunlight burned
into the blue shadows. Carley had never gazed upon a scene like this.
Hostile and prejudiced, she yet felt wrung from her an acknowledgment of
beauty and grandeur. But wild, violent, savage! Not livable! This insulated
rift in the crust of the earth was a gigantic burrow for beasts, perhaps
for outlawed men--not for a civilized person--not for Glenn Kilbourne.
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